By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Bird Song of the Day
Blue Mockingbird, Zona Arqueológica Monte Albán–Camino Ecológico, Centro, Oaxaca, Mexico.
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Kamala’s VP search.
(2) Democrats on race (or rather, racial classification)
(2) Trish Greenhalgh on Long Covid.
(3) Covid and class.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
“Video from Trump assassination attempt victim’s POV shows figure moving on roof moments before gunfire” [FOX]. “A video from James Copenhaver, one of the victims critically wounded in the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Trump, shows a figure moving across the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building just minutes before gunfire rang out at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In the video taken at 6:08 p.m. on July 13, the person appears on the roof of the building adjacent to where Trump is speaking and can be seen walking from the 1:00 second mark to about the 2:50 second mark.” • Oh. This entire story makes less and less sense as it goes on.
“Pennsylvania county law enforcement officials say Secret Service is presenting a ‘misleading’ picture of Trump shooting scene” [CNN].
Democrats en Déshabillé
Lambert here: Back in the day, when I was involved in efforts to standardize classification schemes, one of my colleagues produced (I paraphrase) the following bon mot: “For all sentences, the word is can be replaced by has been classified as without loss of meaning.” So, “those ideas are green” could be reworded as “those ideas have been classified as green,” and so on. There’s something to be said for that thesis (“I refute it thus“), but Democrats can’t seem to make up their minds about whether it’s true or not. Indeed, they want to have it both ways; “is” would be essentialist; “has been classified” social constructionist (caveat that this is binary, therefore at best an approximation; I’m sure scholarly work has been done on this, and readers should feel free to introduce it). Does anybody remember the enormous liberal dogpile on Rachel Dolezal–
“From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much” [Adolph Reed, Common Dreams]. “This brings me to the most important point that this affair throws into relief. It has outed the essentialism on which those identitarian discourses rest. [Alicia] Garcia asks ‘So why don’t we just accept Dolezal as black? Because she’s not.’ But why is she not black in Garcia’s view? Well, ‘Her parents say she’s not even close to being black.’ But what would that mean — that she has no known black ancestry? Is blackness, then, a matter of hypodescent after all? But, if that’s what it is, then what politically significant meaning does the category have? Dolezal no doubt has her issues and idiosyncrasies, but, especially if the judgment of the NAACP counts for anything in the matter, I’m pretty sure I’d take her in a trade for Clarence Thomas, Cory Booker, Condi Rice, and five TFA pimps to be named later. Or would Dolezal’s ‘not even close to being black’ mean that she was raised outside of ‘authentic’ black idiom or cultural experience? But whose black idiom or cultural experience would that be? Is there really an irreducible, definitive one? If so, on which Racial Voice blog or Ivy League campus might we find it?” • Note that Kamala’s rollout of identitarian verticals: First, Black Women. Second, White Women. Third, White Men. Fourth, Latino Men.” Fifth, AAHNPI. This rollout strongly suggests an essentialist perspective. I mean, where’s the “Mixed Race” vertical? Could we have separate verticals for 1/2 White, 1/4 White, etc.? I would guess the Democrat base is essentialist (race is, after all, a box to be checked, or not checked, on an HR form). The following Mother Jones headline is on point–
“White Man Tells Black Journalists His Black Opponent Is Not Black” [Mother Jones]. • Clearly essentialist. Not Black/Indian; Black. Not “identifying as Black.” Or Black and Indian. Black. OTOH, we have Axios–
“Donald Trump falsely suggests Kamala Harris misled voters about her race” [Associated Press]. “CHICAGO (AP) — Donald Trump falsely suggested Kamala Harris had misled voters about her race as the former president appeared Wednesday before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago in an interview that quickly turned hostile. The Republican former president wrongly claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage. ‘I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?’ Trump said while addressing the group’s annual convention. Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both immigrants to the U.S. As an undergraduate, Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities, where she also pledged the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. As a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, supporting legislation to strengthen voting rights and to reform policing.” • AP is, I would say, social constructivist, although Trump also wants it both ways (“happened to turn” is social constructivist, but “is she Indian or is she Black” is essentialist).
Of course, Kamala’s views count, too (at least from a socially constructivist standpoint). Here’s a cooking video from 2019:
The relevant frame:
Personally, I don’t care one way or the other; I’m a social constructivist. That said, what’s the theory of the case here? The Democrats — and Harris — need to make up their minds whether they’re social constructivists or, like Mother Jones, Trump, and whichever staffer named and organized the identity rollouts, essentialists. They need to pick one or the other, and stop trying to have it both ways.
2024
Less than one hundred days to go!
Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:
First poll with Harris at the top of the Democrat ticket; Trump’s position deteriorates (and any advantage he gained from the assassination attempt has been wiped away). Nevertheless, he still leads, albeit within the margin of error. NOTE RCP used to have two pages of swing states; I always used the first one. Now there is only one, which I take as an indicator that Harris v. Trump polling is not all that widespread.
Vibe shift:
Unbelievable vibe shift in the US with Kamala Harris https://t.co/LAZoglUMHW pic.twitter.com/rrMisGHLbu
— Albert Pinto (@70sBachchan) July 26, 2024
We’ll see what the averages say Friday, but:
Harris has wiped out Trump's lead across seven swing states in the latest round of the Bloomberg News / Morning Consult poll. The poll found a big Dem lead in Michigan, a more modest Trump lead in Pennsylvania and close contests everywhere else. Dead heat.https://t.co/UzzZaknhD2 pic.twitter.com/xxJN94TFec
— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) July 30, 2024
Lots of Brownian motion here, still. More noteworthy is that Trump got no visible bounce from the assassination.
* * * “Biden privately weighs how to use the time left in his presidency” [WaPo]. On Air Force One: “About an hour into the flight, [BIden] glanced at the television playing in the background, where guests on MSNBC were speculating over who Vice President Harris would pick as her running mate. ‘Kamala and I talked,’ Biden remarked. ‘I said she could pick me.’ He waited a beat, then said he was joking, prompting laughter…. The anger and bitterness from the lead-up to his decision to withdraw — when he felt cornered by members of his own party — seem to have given way to an attitude that is more accepting of the current moment. Biden is occasionally wistful, and he has engaged in lighter and even playful moments after a weeks-long period of intense stress, for example peeking through American flags and around columns near the Rose Garden to make faces at aides who had gathered to applaud him after his Oval Office address last week.” • Then again, he could kick some of the backstabbers in the stones on his way out the door….
* * * Kamala (D): “Harris’ high-stakes veepstakes: Fundraising powerhouses vie for VP slot” [Open Secrets]. Handy chart:
I’ve highlighted the conventional wisdom of those in the running (not including Kelly, at press time).
Kamala (D): “Pennsylvania Gov. Shapiro cancels Hamptons trip, days before expected Harris VP reveal” [CNBC]. “”The Governor’s trip was planned several weeks ago and included several fundraisers for his own campaign committee,” Shapiro spokesman Manuel Bonder confirmed to NBC News. ‘His schedule has changed and he is no longer traveling to the Hamptons this weekend.'” • So, announcement next week, apparently. And I was so excited.
* * * Kamala (D): “The DNC virtual roll call to nominate Kamala Harris is underway. This is how it will work” [WHYY]. “Delegates to the Democratic National Convention began officially selecting their nominee for president in a process that kicked off Thursday. But unlike in past years, they are not doing so in the raucous party atmosphere of the convention floor or even during the convention itself. Instead, they are filling out electronic ballots at their homes, offices or vacation spots more than two weeks before the first delegate steps foot inside Chicago’s United Center. Vice President Kamala Harris is the only candidate eligible to receive votes after no other candidate qualified by a Tuesday night deadline. The ‘virtual roll call,’ the term used by Democratic National Committee officials, will allow Harris to claim the nomination by Monday evening. That’s just 15 days after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek a second term following widespread concerns within the party over his ability to defeat Republican nominee Donald Trump in November.” • The byte-filled room….
* * * Kamala (D): “Democrats Think Their Candidate is Running for President of Online, Again” [Freddie DeBoer]. “And many seem intent on remaking a core 2016 mistake: acting as though the Democratic candidate’s job is to become the President of Online rather than the President of the United States, begging Harris to devote her campaign to memes and social media, playing to people like them instead of the middle class white retirees in Wisconsin and Arizona who will actually determine this election. Here [New York Magazines’] Jason P. Frank says that the key to victory for Harris is mobilizing ‘stans.’ Jason, what Kamala Harris needs is white independents without college degrees in swing states. Are a lot of those in very-online fan armies? I have my doubts. In fact I suspect most of the people Harris needs the most don’t know what the fuck a stan is and don’t spend any time in the spaces where stans congregate! Here Angelina Chapin credulously covers a pro-Harris Zoom call for white women, which I’m sure is a great way to reach women married to laid-off-ironworkers-turned-Uber-Eats-drivers in the Rust Belt. Here Camille Squires talks about all the enthusiasm for Harris that’s bubbling up in Harris’s old sorority. Squires writes that ‘there’s little doubt that she can count on the support of the more than 360,000 women of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’ Well, yes, that’s true. As would Biden. I don’t think the Democrats were going to struggle to reach the Black sorority sister demographic. The weird way that a given party’s most loyal voters are often rendered the least important is another dumb element of democracy, and another fact of life. This all reflects a pitfall that pretty much everyone falls into, but which is particularly hard to avoid when your side of the partisan divide controls most of the media: playing to those within your coalition rather than those who you might be able to drag into it. All of the winking, self-impressed meme politics going on right now are useful if you want to win the day on Bluesky but profoundly useless if you want to herd many of our dumbest voters onto the Democratic party’s pasture. If Harris is going to win, the absolute last thing she should do is to run a meme candidacy like that presided over by Robbie Mook in 2016, where Hillary’s agenda took a back seat to a never-ending procession of glamorous celebrity photo ops and a wince-inducing attempt to make the candidate into America’s cool grandma.” • Clinton 2.0.
Kamala (D): “We Get to Decide What Is Possible Under a Future Harris Administration” [Ilhan Omar, The Nation]. • Not if the way Kamala made it to the top of the ticket is any indication, no.
* * * Trump (R): “Donald Trump falsely suggests Kamala Harris misled voters about her race” [Associated Press]. I run this again to make a specific comment on the campaign: “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” • Again, I’m banging my head on my desk because I didn’t save the very early Kamala Harris campaign brochure where she ran as Indian.
Trump (R): “JD Vance Says Trump’s Comments About Kamala Harris’ Racial Identity Were ‘Hysterical'” [NOTUS]. The headline is the reverse of what Vance said: ” Sen. JD Vance told reporters it’s ‘hysterical how much the media is overreacting’ to his running mate Donald Trump’s comments questioning whether Vice President Kamala Harris is Black.” Not “Trump’s comments”; the media. More: “‘I think he pointed out the fundamental chameleon-like nature of Kamala Harris. And you guys saw yesterday, she was in Georgia, and she put on a southern accent for a Georgia audience. She grew up in Vancouver. What the hell is going on here? She is not who she pretends to be.’ When asked by a reporter explicitly if he questions whether Harris is Black, Vance said, ‘What I question is why she presents a different posture depending on which audience that she’s in front of.'” • Fair. See “Democrats on race” above. I did say I was out of the snark business, but Trump is said to be adept with nicknames. Couldn’t something be done with “Kamala” and “Chameleon”?
Trump (R): “The farmers who love JD Vance” [Politico]. “Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has had a rough week. But you wouldn’t know it from today’s fundraiser in Coalinga, Calif., where he got a warm reception from California’s farming community. California Republicans were quick to brush off his positions on ‘childless cat ladies’ — and eager to turn Democratic messaging on its head by rallying behind the embattled Ohio senator. ‘We’re weird like him,’ said Barbara Hallmeyer, a retired high school drama teacher and a California Republican Party delegate attending the fundraiser. Vance’s greeting is a measure of Trump’s continuing grip on the farm vote and among rural voters, whom he won by a large margin in 2020, according to exit polls. But it’s also a sign that, despite worries in some quarters of the party that Vance is a liability to the ticket, key elements of the GOP base remain supportive even after a wave of negative press coverage surrounding his provocative statements.” • I don’t think “weird” resonates outside already deeply committed Democrats (and the ads in opposition write themselves).
Trump (R): “Trump Forces Out Project 2025 Mastermind” [The Daily Beast]. “His departure hinted that Heritage was shutting down its work on the initiative more than a year after Project 2025 produced its cornerstone 900-page policy mandate that came to define the MAGA movement. The manifesto attracted widespread criticism in recent weeks over its extremist proposals that would demand fealty from federal workers, promote Christian nationalism and overhaul policies from abortion to civil liberties and climate and restructure the departments of Justice and Defense, among other agencies. As the project backfired politically, Trump sought to distance himself from the group despite its naked ties to his first administration, with Project leadership boasting a number of senior Trump aides and close advisers. The source told the Beast that the rift between the Trump campaign and the Heritage Foundation was not ideological, but rather was about power and who will ultimately control Trump World and make staffing decisions in a possible second Trump administration.” • “Came to define the MAGA movement’ in whose eyes?
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Airborne Transmission
Corsi-Rosenthal Box still going strong:
The Corsi-Rosenthal box is the best air purifier we've tested out of 26 —and it's one we built ourselves! How can it the BEST air purifier when we've got sleek Dysons, portable Levoits, and much cooler boxes of filters? Our newest R&D Video answers that! https://t.co/EwcN8B1jXL pic.twitter.com/aAyUALqVpH
— RTINGS.com (@rtingsdotcom) June 27, 2024
NOTE More modern designs use big honkin’ computer fans suitable for gaming machines. These are quieter, and also can be assembled in areas that don’t use box fans (Southeast Asia). However, the same engineering principles apply.
Maskstravaganza
“Masking Policies at National Cancer Institute–Designated Cancer Centers During Winter 2023 to 2024 COVID-19 Surge” [JAMA]. “Cancer centers were more likely to require universal masking in at least some areas if they were located in the Northeast (11 [78.6%]), had longer NCI designation duration (first quintile: 10 [83.3%]), had more program funding (first quintile: 11 [84.6%]), or had a higher care ranking (first quintile: 11 [84.6%])” • And no wonder!
Vaccines: H5N1
“Reassortment”:
CDC: Seasonal flu jabs offered to farmworkers to prevent H5N1 reassortment
"Reassortment could lead to a new influenza virus … a virus that has the transmissibility of seasonal influenza and the severity of H5N1."
Alexander Tin’s noteshttps://t.co/TD6B6gTUgj pic.twitter.com/ooDVsW01Oq
— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) August 1, 2024
On reassortment, from Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology (2014):
Reassortment is the process by which influenza viruses swap gene segments. This genetic exchange is possible due to the segmented nature of the viral genome and occurs when two differing influenza viruses co-infect a cell. The viral diversity generated through reassortment is vast and plays an important role in the evolution of influenza viruses. Herein we review recent insights into the contribution of reassortment to the natural history and epidemiology of influenza A viruses, gained through population scale phylogenic analyses. We describe methods currently used to study reassortment in the laboratory, and we summarize recent progress made using these experimental approaches to further our understanding of influenza virus reassortment and the contexts in which it occurs.
Reassortment, then, does not happen with corona viruses (mavens, correct me). So if human-to-human H5N1 transmission really gets rolling, it could be bad for humanity in a way that Covid is not.
Sequelae: Covid
Long COVID: a clinical update” (preview) [Trish Greenhalgh et al., The Lancet]. “Long COVID currently has no definitive cure, so prevention is of the utmost importance. The best way to prevent long COVID is to prevent COVID-19 through well established public health measures such as paying attention to indoor air quality (eg, ventilation or filtration); wearing well fitting, high-filtration masks or respirators when appropriate; and supporting infectious individuals to quarantine. People with acute COVID-19 should ensure they rest.” • Handy chart of the multiple pathways to Long Covid (the “pinball machine” below):
r
The following is Greenhalgh’s “lay summary” of the Lancet piece:
“Long COVID – a dystopian game of pinball” [Trish Greenhalgh, Independent Sage]. The deck: “Prof Trish Greenhalgh explains the findings of her recent comprehensive Lancet review of Long Covid.” Brilliant extended metaphor: “Long COVID is a real condition whose complex biological basis is beginning to be understood. The sequence of events that makes COVID-19 into a protracted (and quite possibly, lifelong) illness in some but not all people is a bit like a dystopian game of pinball. An unlucky ball hits a series of key buffers, buzzers and bells, triggering a cascade of further events… [T[hese changes flip off additional cascades of biochemical messengers (‘supplementary pathological mechanisms’), which, in health, contribute to keeping the body in balance…. [T[hese microscopic changes in genes, molecules, proteins, cells and micro-organisms produce various kinds of organ damage…. [T]hese organ-level changes lead to the well-known symptoms of Long COVID described in the second paragraph above. Different people will experience different combinations of symptoms just as the various lights, buzzers and bells on a pinball machine react differently depending on the precise trajectory and force of the initial ball. But the process is always a whole-body phenomenon which begins with specific virological and immunological triggers and then cascades to affect multiple organs. You didn’t get that when you had COVID-19? Lucky you. The ball of your initial infection missed a few vital targets. But that doesn’t mean you’re immune from Long COVID for life. Your next infection could light up the whole machine.” • Yep.
“Long Covid Defined” (“Sounding Board”) [NEJM]. Interesting to read on conjunction with Greenhalgh. Here is their definition, which does come in the form of a Figure:
Elite Maleficence
“Upcoming Meeting” [HICPAC]. “The next HICPAC meeting is scheduled for August 22-23, 2024. This will be a virtual meeting.” I wonder why? More: “See agenda for time dedicated to public comments…. Public engagement and input are vital to HICPAC’s work.” • No agenda is posted. Of course. Here is the roster, which lists seven members. That’s odd: HICPAC’s charter: “The Committee shall consist of 14 non-Federal members, including the Chair or Co-Chairs.” Does the current make-up even have a quorum?
Lambert here: New York hospitalization leveling out, and now WalGreens positivity down for two weeks, are the first positive signs I’ve seen in a long time. Wastewater still going strong, though!
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
| Wastewater | ||
| This week[1] CDC July 22: | Last Week[2] CDC July 8 (until next week): | |
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| |
| Variants [3] CDC July 20 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC July 20 | |
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|
| Hospitalization | ||
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data July 31: | National [6] CDC July 6: | |
|
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|
|
| Positivity | ||
| National[7] Walgreens July 29: | ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic July 20: | |
|
 |
|
| Travelers Data | ||
| Positivity[9] CDC July 8: | Variants[10] CDC July 8: | |
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 |
|
| Deaths | ||
| ★ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC July 20: | ★ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC July 20: | |
|
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular.
[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveling off. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.
[7] (Walgreens) An optimist would see a peak.
[8] (Cleveland) Slowing. Comment on the Cleveland Clinic:
Why is the Cleveland Clinic building a new facility for a professional basketball team? These hospitals are not 'nonprofits' they are ridiculously profitable monopolies with an endless cash gusher to point at whatever they want. https://t.co/1REM2LMLjd
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 29, 2024
Ka-ching.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time rasnge. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) Same deal. Those sh*theads.
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.
[12] Deaths low, ED up.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US rose by 14,000 to 249,000 on the period ending July 27th, reaching an almost new yearly high, surpassing market expectations of 236,000. This increase, along with other key indicators, indicates that the US labor market continued to weaken during this period, bolstering expectations that the Federal Reserve may lower benchmark borrowing costs by September.”
Employment Situation: “United States Challenger Job Cuts” [Trading Economics]. “US employers announced 25,855 job cuts in July 2024, the lowest level in a year, and down 46.9% from June’s 48,786. Still, it is the highest total for the month since 2020, above July 2023’s 23,697.:
Manufacturing: “United States ISM Manufacturing PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The ISM Manufacturing PMI fell to 46.6 in July of 2024 from 48.5 in the previous month, firmly below market expectations of 48.8, reflecting the sharpest contraction in US factory activity since November 2023.”
The Economy:
"We have a 30 year old family member who works on the assembly line building Peterbuilt trucks in Denton, Texas. (a PACCAR company) He has seniority and works the #1 shift. He was told not to come to work next week. Shutting down the assembly line for a week due to lack of…
— Dave Collum (@DavidBCollum) July 31, 2024
Apparel:
This video comparing the same dress across different price points is also very good.
My point is not to tell you how much to spend on something (buy what suits your budget). Only saying that two things that look alike online are not necessarily the samehttps://t.co/UzcnW0vh1V
— derek guy (@dieworkwear) July 31, 2024
The video on Tik Tok scammers and fast fashion is well worth a watch.
Tech: “Hacker Shows How to Get Free Laundry For Life” [404 Media]. “Orlitzky then tried a bunch of stuff that did not work for unlocking free laundry… What did work was short circuiting the red and black wires on the coin-drop mechanism. He found this out after discovering a photo of the same coin-drop part on Amazon, he said. With the dryers, Orlitzky writes he had to use a voltage tester to make sure he didn’t get electrocuted, and then expose the wires with a pocket knife. That’s it. ‘The main hurdle is that you have to be pissed off enough to try,’ Orlitzky said. ‘But armed with enough outrage, the actual bypass is fairly accessible.’ Once the prep work is done, shorting both the dryers and washers can be done in seconds or a minute. ‘I do it in the middle of the day. The bypasses don’t harm the machines, and the machines don’t belong to the people who own the buildings/cameras. Your neighbors (who are most likely to catch you in the act) aren’t invested either way. What are they gonna do?’ he added.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 55 Neutral (previous close: 42 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 40 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 31 at 2:15:54 PM ET.
Zeitgeist Watch
The world might be a different place if we taught grade school kids about power curves instead of averages:
The top 10% of alcohol drinkers in the US consume 74 drinks per week. pic.twitter.com/18QUFhyLuk
— Mike Beckham (@mikebeckhamsm) July 31, 2024
Class Warfare
Yes, of course Long Covid hits the working class disprotionately. From Greenhalgh’s Lancet paper (above):
News of the Wired
“Parasites Are Everywhere. Why Do So Few Researchers Study Them?” [Smithsonian]. “But parasites are also diverse and understudied creatures that have evolved to flourish in nearly every animal and ecosystem on Earth. They keep ecosystems in balance, providing a natural control on host species while stimulating their co-evolution over many generations. …. Parasites also change host species’ behavior, leading to oddities like the pop-culture-worthy zombie ants that mysteriously climb ten inches up plants, permanently lock their jaws into the plant, and allow their parasitic fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) to grow out of their body and rain spores onto unsuspecting ants below. And parasites keep food webs miraculously complex, forming hundreds of connections among themselves, other parasites and host species. Often, in an effort to travel between host animals, parasites will expose their hosts to new predators, like the tapeworm Ligula intestinalis, which grows so large it changes the buoyancy of the fish it inhabits, causing the fish to swim closer to the surface and get eaten by birds. Parasitism, a relationship between two species where one benefits at the other’s expense, has evolved independently over 220 times in animals—more than any other animal lifestyle. Nearly half of all animals are parasites, with conservative estimates at 3.5 million species. Like the mammals, birds, insects and fish all around us, each parasite serves important functions in its environment—ones that, without the parasite, could spell widespread ecological change, if not disaster. For example, a widely supported idea called the ‘enemy release hypothesis‘ suggests that as parasites of invasive plants and animals decrease, the spread and abundance of the invasive species increase.” • Maybe I should have filed this under The Bezzle. Or Class Warfare.
“‘Sensational breakthrough’ marks step toward revealing hidden structure of prime numbers” [Science]. “Looking back, Guth recalls a quote from the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who instructs an aspiring poet to “live the questions” rather than seeking answers. For Guth, this strategy of being comfortably uncomfortable with intractable problems resonates with his experience as a mathematician.” • One of my intractable problems is reading this thing, which I’m sure is dumbed down for a lay audience. Perhaps a reader will help.
Look at all those PDP-11s!
The state of the ARPANET when I received my first email address. pic.twitter.com/hjDbcdk5RU
— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) August 1, 2024
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When I get older losing my fear
Many years from now
Will you still be using me as a bulwark
Nuclear greetings, leaving landmarks stark
If I’d been out of sorts for a long time
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m seventy-nine
You’ll be older too
And if you say the word
I could slay with you
I could be handy, mending a feud
When your other armaments have gone
You can nuke a city of the other side
Pandora goes for a ride
Doing the radiation, digging the graves
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m seventy-nine
Every summer we can nuke an adversary
That we incite, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save the world
Other countries on their knees
Iran, North Korea and oh no, not Belize!
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Evermore your mine
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m seventy-nine
When I’m Sixty-Four, by the Beatles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCTunqv1Xt4
Wukchumni, this is grand! Made my day!
“Parasites Are Everywhere. Why Do So Few Researchers Study Them?”
In politics too.
“The tapeworm is our only ally.”
So says the tapeworm.
Why? Bcz we’d have to treat them with horse-dewormer and this we must never do!
So speaks the Spirit of Pandemics Past.
“The Screwtapeworm Letters”
A senior Pharma executive’s correspondence with lower-level workers and lobbyists on ways to discourage off-label uses (even if effective) of off-patent medicines.
Sample quote: “Always remember, my dear Wormwood, that the purpose of our healthcare provisioning system is not ‘health’ per se, but revenue in exchange for a certain level of exertion in the direction of recovering health. If we are too effective at promoting the former, we risk impairing the growth of the latter.”
Mr. Samuel,
I think the tapeworm reference is to
“Our only ally in the Middle East,”
not biology.
From memory, the macrocyclic lactones (Ivermectin, etc) don’t work on tapeworms, you’ll need praziquantel. Many commercially available horse wormers come with both active compounds, so double protection for you!
Gotta get on your regional annual schedule! Although the big news is testing.
>>>For example, a widely supported idea called the ‘enemy release hypothesis‘ suggests that as parasites of invasive plants and animals decrease, the spread and abundance of the invasive species increase.”
IIRC, subsaharan Africa in areas is one of the more deadly for humans because Africa is the home continent of humans meaning everything evolved right along with them – animals, parasites, and diseases. Large animals are still around because of this and this was the last place colonized by the Europeans.
Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim At Tinker Creek” is, among other things, essentially the diary of someone who is awed by the seeming creativity and improbability of certain successful parasites. Worth a read.
Speaking as a tapeworm, I’m insulted.
The SARS-Co-V infections chart appended after the Harris Veep blurb may be a mistake, but it is a felicitous one. That combination suggests so many forms and routes to dysfunction in American society and politics that I just sat back and began laughing.
> so many forms and routes to dysfunction in American society and politics
Indeed. I have fixed the chart, thank you!
The chart taught me that “Boating” is a common symptom of Covid along with constipation or diarrhea. Hopefully, boating and diarrhea are mutually exclusive. Not a good combination.
Unless you are on the poop deck.
@Lambert you meant to put a chart related to VP search but left one for Covid instead
Covid has my vote for Donkey Show Veep, it has a real connection to the common people, they can relate.
Covid should be at the top of the Green Party ticket.
Lambert, the Long Covid chart appears twice, once under the headline for the Harris VP choice. I don’t know if this is a mistake or some sort of mr. subliminal message. Please advise.
Ah yes democracy–you can have any candidate you want as long as it’s
BidenHarris. Given Biden’s famously poor judgment could his choice of VP and now candidate be the final gotcha on America?Somehow, increasingly, I don’t think this is going to work for the Dems. America doesn’t hate Trump nearly as much as they do.
Wrong chart for Kamala V.P.
I was wondering if it was a metaphor, like sausage being made, then realized it was for Covid.
About Newsom as the potential V.P.
“or Harris would need to establish residency in another state to avoid any challenge on the rule.” Didn’t she run her presidential campaign out of Baltimore in 2020?
What happened to California, where she claims to be from, in spite of growing up in Montreal?
If she can ignore this detail, and claim to be one thing, rather than the other, why not geography?
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/kamala-harris-indian-heritage-mother-tamil-nadu-b2589336.html
Wukchumni, remember Boy George’s “Karma Chameleon?”
Kamaleon Charmer?
Just screams out for your lyric reworkings. ;-0
Doe caught in the headlights in your eyes all the way
If I listen to your word salad sandwiches
Would you say you’re a woman without conviction
As if there’s anybody who doesn’t know
How to sell a contradiction?
Should Joe up and go, Should Joe up and go?
Karma Kamala, Kamala karma, Kamala, chameleon
Get ready for Joe to go, get ready for Joe to go
Being President would be easy if it was a paint by number scheme
Who gets the green, who gets the green
And to hear your vapid words ever’y day
When you used to be only good for a Tweet, eh
I heard Willie Brown say that power was an addiction
In got we trust, our loathe is strong
When you go, you’re gone forever
…meanwhile
You let the MIC string you along, you let the MIC string you along
Karma Kamala, Kamala karma, Kamala, chameleon
Get ready for Joe to go, get ready for Joe to go
Being President would be easy if it was a paint by number scheme
Who gets the green, who gets the green
Ev’ry day is like survival
You’re gonna be Donald’s election rival
Ev’ry day is like survival
You’re gonna be Donald’s election rival
Karma Kamala, Kamala karma, Kamala, chameleon
Get ready for Joe to go, get ready for Joe to go
Being President would be easy if it was a paint by number scheme
Who gets the green, who gets the green
Karma Chameleon, by Culture Club
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5WA79F4UCs
The thought occurs that there is a strong element of something very like karma in the JRB story. He was used (and evidently happy to be used) as an instrument of the D Party to keep Sanders away from nomination, but then was discarded when he was no longer useful for Party purposes.
The Party giveth and the Party taketh away;
blessed be the name of the Partyshame on the Party for its abuse of the elderly.One wonders what karmic consequences lie in the future for the current willing instrument of the Party.
There may be some karma in that biden ended covid and then covid ended biden (h/t lambert last week)
It really could not have happened to a nicer guy.
She’s a woman without conviction (woman without conviction)
She’s a race nobody knows (a race nobody knows)
Can she sell a contradiction (sell a contradiction)
She comes and goes
She comes and goes
74 drinks (units?) a week. I call BS. Come back when it’s 28 units a day like in UK and parts of Scandinavia. I’ve been close to people who can do 30 units a day and be a “high functioning alcoholic” who a surprisingly large number of people won’t even spot that they’re intoxicated. There are LOTS of them. The “irish liver” is a dark joke made to explain why these people aren’t dead.
A GP in Sweden once told me when I was in a very bad place due to workplace abuse “you know we automatically double the number of units quoted by the patient. If I do that with you, you will get written up as a medical miracle so I know you’re not lying”.
74 drinks a week is nothing. Even if a drink is a double scotch. Stop reporting official stats. GPs on the ground double the figures and are often right. Thankfully i escaped the horrible hole. I saw others that didn’t. 74 drinks per week was NOTHING. Frankly that figure doesn’t compute with the deaths due to the “disease of despair” mentioned here before. Im just glad I escaped and have support and by a quirk of my genes have not messed up anything else beyond my existing heart condition. Seeing someone who is REALLY bad in terms of booze is very very scary and (excuse the pun) sobering. I’ve seen it. I won’t go there.
I knew a numismatist who put away 1 & 1/2 liters of hard liquor a day, the most of anybody i’ve ever known. Once a year i’d give him the ‘man, you drink way too much! speech, as he was fixing himself a double and a single for yours truly.
His face got all swollen and he was prone to forgetting things, and then one day he decided to dry himself out, and went a whole day without drinking and woke up the next morning and went out to get the newspaper on the driveway, had a seizure and fell on his temple, dead at 44.
I hate to say it, but his passing was almost merciful.
Sudden cold turkey is incredibly dangerous. There are well established guidelines on tapering off booze to avoid seizures or stroke.
Horrid when someone realises they need to stop but do it the wrong way :(
But maybe some people are like your friend who are stuck in an awful life and maybe even tapering off won’t provide long term solution as the “despair” will return. Addiction services here in mid UK are absolutely overwhelmed.
…I feel Wild Turkey would have kept him going a bit longer
Yeah there is a deep irony when the poison will actually keep them afloat for a while…..or until the services can actually do what they are meant to do to help.
I had family members who almost literally lived on nothing but beer. All of, well almost all of, the day’s carbs, B vitamins, and some hydration, though it is counterintuitive; booze drys your body out.
I try and keep my intake to one or at most two drinks a day in the evening. Throw in the hypertension meds and we have a “Counterindications 101” quiz show.
“Today’s lucky winner gets to live! The other contestants go home in this fabulous designer pine box!”
The factories in my neck of the woods are gone but they have been replaced by addiction rehab facilities. Still it’s difficult for people to get help, there is such great need. Nearly every family I know has lost a loved one to overdose.
So sorry to hear that. Yves has made comments before about the affliction that alcohol, fentanyl etc have imposed upon us – the diseases of despair.
My background has enabled me to see what it is going on here in the middle of the UK: “mainstream” services for addiction are “treating the easy cases” to get £££. The difficult cases are left by the wayside. There are some very unfunded charities that try to help these “left by the waywide/difficult cases” but they are not going to get realistic help under the frankly despicable funding regime of our new “wonderful” Labour govt.
I’ve just been reading up on my family history so as to make a comment in Links regarding quilts. I found this:
One event, however, might be mentioned, as it
made a lasting impression not only upon him, but
upon his entire family. It is told by Mrs. Clark.
A Captain Clapp, member of the same legislature,
neighbor and warm personal friend, was afliicted
with melancholia about a week before the close of
the session, probably in the year 1820, and Captain
Follett prevailed upon him to go home, agreeing to
accompany him. At one place where they stopped
for the night they slept in the same bed, and in the
morning Captain Clapp said he wanted to sleep a
little longer than usual. Captain Follett left him,
but returned to the room in about half an hour, to
find that he had cut his throat from ear to ear and
was dead. Captain Follett was very much affected
over the affair and was some time getting over it No
■suspicion was ever at+aclo^d to him.
I meant to add-
Keep in mind that in 1820 alcohol of varying sorts was the beverage of the day, as well as night.
Perish the thought of drinking the water.
It appears that graph is from “Paying the Tab”, by one Philip Cook, published by Princeton University Press in 2007. I only noticed because I wanted to know what the definition of drink was (measured in alcohol). When I was doing TIPS training back in my barkeep years a drink was 1.5 oz booze(80ish proof), 4 oz wine, or a 12 oz beer.
Sorry to be pedantic, but could you translate into standard units that the non-USA uses?
The brain fog courtesy of Long COVID gets me late in the day and my ability to translate it is going downhill :(
I wish they had taught me in public school. All numbers are rounded, heh heh
12 oz beer = 350ml
1.5 oz liquor = 45ml
4 oz wine = 120 ml
80 proof = 40% alcohol
Wine is generally 12% alcohol
Genaric beer is around 4.5%
Cheers!
As lyman pointed out below, it may be 1 oz, not 1.5 on the booze. My memory is known to misfire.
I never understood why liquor went to 200 proof, was 100 proof taken already?
This just got tossed through my transom. 17 gallons of beer? Pabst Blue Ribbon offers 180 pack for 180th anniversary. Where to buy. The jokes write themselves.
PBR to me has this metallic taste to it, I prefer to go with non metallic tasting beers.
You are much too diplomatic. It’s terrible. Sold in 180 packs. Dear god.
I have to add, would you like it at $95.00? Heh heh It’s the “Prepper Special”.
Just store it with the other “Pickling Supplies.”
https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-alcohol-measured-by-proof
Originally 100 proof was point of flammability
That’s what I was wondering too – how much alcohol is one drink? When I did the TIPS (training designed to put any liability on the poor bastard behind the bar rather than the establishment itself, but I digress) I thought it was 1 oz of booze that was one drink, but I may be misremembering. Anyway, the wine and beer are the same as I remember, and there’s less than 1 oz of alcohol in your average 5% alcohol 12 oz beer. Aim high!
What I’m getting at here is that depending on how you define a drink, getting to 74/week isn’t that hard, especially when you’re drinking 3-4 finger pours in a bucket glass on a nightly basis.
Seeing someone who is REALLY bad in terms of booze is very very scary and (excuse the pun) sobering…
Totally agree– not super-religious about it, but having seen the effects of alcohol-induced dementia up close and personal, I try to keep any boozing for the holidays: that dementia is one path I’d like to avoid if I can help it.
Also agree. My father, who was of Irish background, was a drunk from a long line of drunks – his father, his many uncles, his grandfather, etc. He was sometimes an angry drunk and sometimes a crying one (complete with traditional Irish singing – save me!). The only times he was tolerable were when he was passed out. He died young. No one missed him. What he taught me was never to drink.
A saying I heard on NC, “An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than their doctor”.
I had a friend who is dead now. When he was about 30 he was asked by his doctor how much he drank. He replied that he drank a case of beer during the week and 1/2 a bottle of vodka on the weekend. That level of alcohol consumption is basically nothing to worry about, especially when you are young and it doesn’t continue to later life.
Fast forward 20 years, he had a heart attack, got stents, his body attacked and plugged the stents and he got an open heart bypass operation. He quit drinking and smoking for the heart issues even though his alcohol consumption was way down to age and maturity. Afterwards his “doctors” were running blood work on him incessantly. I asked him, “Why all the blood work and what are they looking for, is it for the heart issues”? He replied that they were looking at his liver. This went on for another 5 years.
A few years ago his liver failed. Then they found that he had Hepatitis C and he had about 20% of his liver function left. Then he got the “miracle” Hep C drug cure, but too late. He died last year, his liver was too far gone due to the inattentiveness and malpractice of his “doctors” and their prejudice due to his confession of “excessive” alcohol use.
ALL of his doctors that he interacted with over the years should have been sued for malpractice. His alcohol consumption at age 30 had nothing to do with his poor lab results. His doctors used a 30 year old admission of moderate alcohol use to deny him a diagnosis of Hep C and the care he deserved.
When a doctor asks you questions about how much you drink or use drugs, YOU SAY NOTHING! That information is NONE of their business unless it might relate to your health problems. The person that determines if your moderate drug and alcohol use needs mentioning is you.
I had a very stressful occupation. My doc asked me how much I drank, my response was similar to my friend’s. He was ALARMED and ordered blood work. My blood work results were as good as they can get. My doctor is dead, I am alive and healthy as a horse, and my blood work results are still stellar.
I am sorry about your friend.
Bloodwork does not detect liver cirrhosis. My brother’s liver enzymes and all other liver bloodwork numbers were perfect up to his death from liver cirrhosis (due to obesity, not drinking). You need to be scanned (a special ultrasound) or biopsied to know if you have liver cirrhosis. Many doctors do not realize that bloodwork does not show liver cirrhosis; they will do useless bloodwork like your doctor did and then conclude things are fine.
The trade name for it across much of the UK is a “Fibroscan”. It detects inflammation and cirrhosis. It has a more correct generic name reflecting what it actually does (a specialised kind of ultrasound?)
The UK NHS now has mobile Fibroscan trucks to try to keep up with the awful increases in liver damage.
Wow. Mobile Fibroscan trucks. That really says something.
Yeah it’s either really great that we have them or really scary that we’re needing them.
Indeed, a surprising number of people can hold their lives together despite alcohol habits that you would think could kill an elephant. Bismark built Germany (and modern Europe) while drinking enough from morning to night (quite literally) to make Churchill look like an dilettante.
In the past people (well, mostly men) drank vast quantities. There is a misconception that medieval people drank very weak beer to make up for contaminated water. But reconstructions show that medieval beer was quite strong, even by modern standards – 5% or more (weak beer did exist, but that was for the poor or for early morning). Medieval Dublin stonemasons when building Christchurch had, as part of their pay, 8 pints of this strong beer to drink per day, while up high in the spire or roofs. This would have been considered quite normal for working men for much of northern European history. I’ve seen studies from pre-WWI northern French soldiers (military records are often the best for finding ‘real’ consumption rates) and the amount of alcohol a typical Normandy farmer/labourer was staggering – they just drank all day long. Rates of liver cirrhosis were off the charts back then (post WWI the French government put a big effort into reducing rates. Interestingly, cirrhosis rates in Ireland have been quite low.
High alcohol consumption isn’t a straightforward thing – there are many types of drinkers.
When I was 14 I was at a wedding of my cousin, whose parents owned a big country pub and her husband was similarly brought up in a pub. The wedding was a weekend long and both sets of parents felt compelled to invite their best customers. Before or since, I’ve never seen anything like it. My uncle calmly pointed out to me all his best customers and how much they spent. Many would have been 15 to 20 units or more per night, every night, and they maintained jobs that could pay for this. I have never before or after seen people having pints of Guinness and double whiskeys with their breakfast cornflakes, but that was considered pretty normal.
A family friend in his late 30’s was a successful financial analyst and triathlete and married with two kids. One evening he blacked out going to bed. It turns out that for more than a decade the electrolyte drink he took on his morning and evening runs was half vodka, a habit he took up to deal with stress as a student. He was drinking the best part of a bottle of vodka a day and even his wife had no idea. She literally never knew the man she married was perpetually slightly sozzled (and she is a very smart, astute woman). Fortunately, he dealt with it and now hasn’t drunk in a few decades.
I live close to a shelter for elderly alcoholics (yes, I’ve had the jokes that I won’t have far to move when I retire). I’ve heard so many stories – one guy who works there was a street drinker for 20 years and had been a heavy drinker since he was a teenager. He literally drank morning to night, the cheapest nastiest alcohol he could get. One day a friend died and he decided that he didn’t want to die on the streets. He’s been sober 10 years, is married with an apartment and works as an assistant manager in the shelter he once had to use.
A friend who is now an emergency department consultant used to be a barman one of the most notorious Irish pubs in London (as a med student he said he got lots of valuable experience dealing with all the nightly medical emergencies). He said a typical Irish construction worker at the time (this was 2 decades ago, Irish construction workers are now a rarity in London) was doing 8 to 10 pints a night, every night. The hard core did chasers. He knew one foreman who, typical at the time, ran some ‘ghost’ workers and pocketed their wages – this paid for a nightly dozen or more pints and chasers. Even the other drinkers were slightly in awe of his consumption. He hooked up with a woman who had an almost equal consumption. He said that they suddenly stopped coming to the pub and he assumed something bad had happened. But a couple of years later he ran into them and discovered that on moving in together, they decided they couldn’t keep up the drinking and just quit. My friend said they both looked astonishingly healthy.
Thanks for the insights. When my mental health was at its worst (following being a whistle blower) in 2015 on my return to UK out of the 3 psychiatrists I saw in the first two years, I’m 99% sure two had substance abuse problems.
I had a (thankfully not sustained) alcohol issue to deal with, due to the stress, and the vehemence of the psychiatrist instantly raised a red flag in my mind, having worked with medical docs for 20 years and indeed having been an adviser to a PhD student looking at mental health. The word that went through my head was “transference”. Lo and behold, soon after he went on “temporary sick leave”. Which became “long-term sick leave”. He never returned to practice in this city. I really hope he got the help he needed.
The 2nd psychiatrist seemed “a little odd” but I put it down to me over-interpreting. Until an independent person remarked on things, implying that this clinician might be self-medicating. Ouch. There’s an old joke that shrinks are more messed up than their patients. As with a lot of old wives’ tales there can be a nugget of truth there.
Pardon the interruption, but I just caught a TV news segment on Al Jazeera (via a reporter in Amman, Jordan FWIW) in which was reported a claim that the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran was carried out by a bomb planted in his temporary residence in an operation orchestrated by Mossad and approved by Netanyahu.
That is a pretty extraordinary assertion, and I apologize for not having caught where this claim originated. The important point from my perspective is this flies in the face of the prevailing theory of an airstrike via F-35.
Interesting. This is way out of my lane, but I reckon a planted bomb would leave a different footprint. Not contradicting the report here, but wondering if the footprint would disprove one theory or the other.
Smaller charge, no propellant residue or parts strewn about.
A planted bomb in a supposedly secure site in Iran? By who? I don’t believe that, period!
That seems more plausible to me than Israeli aircraft flying all the way to Tehran and back. Israel has a long history in and near Iran. The old government under Shah was a close ally of Israel and there were enough contacts left over for Israel to have supplied quite a lot of arms and miltech support during Iran-Iraq War–much more than US did via Iran-Contra. Some of those ties probably still exist, in forms Israel can exploit for its goals. Not to mention close ties (and espionage/special ops infrastructure Israel has built in Azerbaijan and Kurdish regions…
From the New York Times:
How Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh Was Killed in Iran
Thanks for this addition, Johnny. It is interesting that of the seven “M.E. officials” only the nationalities of the Iranians were announced. Maybe that was part of the anonymity agreement.
Update: the claim apparently came from “anonymous Israeli officials”; additionally, the Israeli military has stated that they only carried out a single assassination via airstrike (Shukr) in the timeframe in question.
The bomb had supposedly been planted months ahead of time. Bear in mind that this could be Israeli disinformation as well.
>Bear in mind that this could be Israeli disinformation as well.
Serious question, do the repercussions differ based on how it was carried out? My takeaway is this just makes it impossible for Israel to put the blame on someone else
The international relations repercussions presumably do not differ greatly with the mode of the attack; regardless of mode, it’s a warlike act that violates Iranian sovereignty. But implications for internal security in Iran would be significant if the “planted bomb” story were true, which, I suppose, contributes to its utility (to Israel) as a story even if it is disinformation.
I was thinking it would add to the mystique of Mossad as this almost magically competent organization. “Not only can we get whomever we want in your own capital city, but we can organize it months in advance.” Prestidigi-assassination!
Another possibility that came to mind is that this narrative advanced by internal opponents/competitors of Netanyahu, but that is unclad speculation. If that were the case, however, it would not necessarily mean that the allegations were not true.
I don’t believe it, period.
From the long Covid chart, I’m curious to know what a mild to severe case of “Boating” is. They did include it with constipation and diarrhea so maybe they are recommending people avoid taking cruises?
> mild to severe case of “Boating” i
Good catch. The NC commentariat is the best commentariat. Probably “bloating.”
I have added orts, in the form of a section on “Democrats on race.” I will shortly add scraps, the details of the campaign. And maybe, if I fiddle and diddle enough, the VP announcement! UPDATE No.
And maybe a plant?
When I was a kid, I ate some of those pretty red berries, and not the raspberries. I vaguely remember the trip to the ER, but not the stomach-pumping part.
And now scrapts [taps mike]. Anyone still reading?
Tech: “Hacker Shows How to Get Free Laundry For Life” [404 Media]. “Orlitzky then tried a bunch of stuff that did not work for unlocking free laundry… What did work was short circuiting the red and black wires on the coin-drop mechanism. He found this out after discovering a photo of the same coin-drop part on Amazon, he said. With the dryers, Orlitzky writes he had to use a voltage tester to make sure he didn’t get electrocuted, and then expose the wires with a pocket knife. That’s it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The statue of limitations has long since lapsed, and good luck finding a payphone these days, but once upon a time somebody gave me a battery powered device that approximated the sound of a Quarter being deposited, if it was $1.75 for the next 3 minutes, why you would place it against the receiver and press it 7 times, that easy.
Years ago there allegedly was a whistle you could get in Captain Crunch cereal boxes that would let you make long distance phone calls for free. By chance it was just the right pitch to activate some system that put the call through. Urban legend?
Not a legend. See John Draper.
Interesting, thanks!
That’s not an urban legend.
In the touch-tone telephone days all the routing was done by computers that would listen to tones on the line. The buttons on the phones would each produce a tone that the system would listen to, to connect to the right place.
Linemen/Technicians had a special phone with extra buttons to test the lines. One of those buttons was for testing a line to see if it was clear. This was done by making a call somewhere and talking for a bit to see if the line was clear to both sides. Since they were testing lines and either connecting from junction boxes, or from a customers place, they made it so that location wouldn’t be charged for the call. It was this tone that the whistle in the Captain Crunch box was close enough to, to fool the system.
When I was a ham operator in high school one of my ham buddies who was a little older and a lot smarter had a “ black box” where the tones transmit into the headset and break ma bell’s system. He introduced me to acid and Pink Floyd’s “small furry creatures in a cave”. A combination to blow your mind!
“phone phreaking” was the spiritual predecessor to computer hacking
The old (available till around the early 2000s) Indonesian 25 Rupiah coin was pretty much an exact match size and weight wise to the American quarter. At the depths of the Asian Financial Crisis, and even now, many many years later, 25 Rupiah is only worth 0.002 cents, so pretty much zero in practical terms.
When I was still a student at a certain American university, the laundry room had a poster that said : “Please do not deposit Indonesian coins into the laundry machine. Thank you.” Arbitrage at its finest. If you are wondering if the same trick worked for vending machines, BART ticket machines, anything that accepts US quarters, the answer is : absolutely!!!
Apparently visiting dignitaries to the US are offered free laundry services, but most do not take this up as their visits are too short. However Netanyahu and his wife allegedly bring suitcases full of dirty clothing to be laundered for free when they visit.
https://x.com/anthonyzenkus/status/1815733061041963253/photo/1
On is vs has been classified as,
Democrats can’t seem to make up their minds about whether it’s true or not.
Democrats can’t seem to make up their minds about whether it has been classified as true or not.
Those two statements have subtly different meanings, no?
> Those two statements have subtly different meanings, no?
That depends!
RE: DNC virtual roll call
I have to say, the willingness to change normal procedure at the drop of a hat to shove the candidate of the donors’ choice down our throats does lend some legitimacy to Trump’s complaints after the 2020 election. I’m not talking about the vote count itself, since Trump wasn’t able to show any anomalies there. But states like PA quickly changing their mail-in voting procedures did raise an eyebrow, and their extremely undemocratic actions since haven’t helped convince me there’s no thumb on the scales somewhere.
Long COVID: a clinical update” (preview) Lancet link should be: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01136-X/abstract
And it looks like twitter messed up the The Economy embed, it’s showing the Apparel one.
Here’s a possible new way to remove PFAS from water: https://phys.org/news/2024-08-health-threat-chemicals-3d-ceramic.html
And a deeper look into what OpenAI needs to do to stay solvent, by Ed Zitron: https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/
Lastly, a Linux Foundation and OpenSSF study on how well open source developers understand secure software development: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-and-openssf-release-report-on-the-state-of-education-in-secure-software-development
> Removing PFAS from water
Thanks for link.
Abstract
A 3D printer prints (extrudes) a latticed filter unit (monolith). The ink is infused with the ceramic, indium oxide. The filters are dropped into the water. The indium oxide attracts the PFAS like a magnet. Reusable. 75% removal, for now.
Fascinating!
Regarding the Riemann hypothesis, all I can say is: Forget it Jake, it’s number theory.
Edifice Wrecks, Big Apple division:
Now, just imagine single family homes selling at a 97.5% discount, which would mean a tired 1964 3/2 in LA would be worth what it sold for when new.
Boomer/Gen X: Thank God that lovely Black or Indian woman or whatever, “South Asian,”… Oh! You know what I mean–who we are paying a fortune for, BTW!–is finally making sure Dad gives up his car keys. I’m so glad we hired her, even though I had my doubts at first. She’ll make sure he’s comfortable.
Vibe shift?
It seems to me this captures one of the larger vibe threads in the cohort that feeds the media narrative.
i was born in 1954 and i do not conform in any way, shape, or form to the attribution in this comment.
i was going to say i resemble it but have thought better of it.
Gen X has been left out of the generational debates so much, everyone forgot cynicism was the calling card.
As I Gen X’er…I think it’s all a bunch of bubble mentality BS that has nothing to do with me.
The embedded tweets for “The Economy” and “Apparel” are the same, duplicating each other.
Fixed. This was certainly my day for dupes! I was rushing to get to the essay on Democrats and race. Goes to show.
“Haste is seldom a wise counselor.” — Captain “Beer”, from Marketa Lazarova
“Personally, I don’t care one way of the other, I’m a social constructivist. That said
the Democrats–and Harris–need to make up their minds whether they are social constructivists (or) essentialists.”
It often seems to be the case that this volatile combination of essentialist and constructivist claims are often due to competing philosophical loyalties and ethical-political aims within the same individual.
It also seems to raise the bigger question of whether truth is something that is discovered or constructed. Maybe all of our thinking tends to become entangled in such paradoxes or contradictions despite our claiming that it doesn’t.
When it suits me I can be quite constructivist yet also in the next moment arguing, say, that thought precedes language (that the mind is an independent place of its own).
It feels like there is some degree of integrity in, at least, recognizing the issue.
Sidestepping the whole constructivist vs. essentialist paradigm, I distinctly recall early on in the Obama campaign when black people were having a hard time recognizing black people from Africa as actually being black. Actual African black people not having grown up in the United States’ culture, not having had the “black experience” here, was seen as an impediment to being recognized as having the hall marks of “real” blackness.
“Could the “first black president” really claim the mantle of “blackness” when his mother was a single white woman from some Iowan hinterland?; could Obama be considered truly black if his father, with whom he spent a lot of his youth, wasn’t actually an American?, etc., etc. etc. Widely discussed in right wing circles, it took up a lot of the air in Democratic politics as well. It was Hillary Clinton, after all, who first coined the term “violent Obama Bro’s” that blew up in her face. But, the crucial thing was that it had the effect of bringing black people together in support for a Democratic candidate that was seen as being under attack over the color of their skin. “Magical Kenyan negro”/”violent Obama Bro” or not, the black electorate just weren’t going to have it; they overcame their own priors to grant him full black-hood, and the rest was history.
Anyway, I have to wonder if that history is not informing this debate now that the black vote is increasingly in doubt amongst underserved black communities. Is a half black father from Jamaica really black? How does that factor against having a full blooded South Indian for a mother? Whatever else it may do, it draws the debate away from the fact that this woman never got a single elector in her only primary, and her experience in the public eye could charitably be described as a disaster.
It certainly changes the subject into lanes that the Democratic party’s embrace of idpol can handle better than whether or not she is competent to do the job. Black people will rally against any attacks against her and the tiresome wails of the inherent racism of Republicans will be heard across the land.
I have no idea how this all started but it smells like a black flag on the part of the Democratic party, and one into which Trump stumbled unawares. I admit to not having watched the interview in which this came up because boring, but one has to wonder if the question that brought this all up was not seeded by people who knew exactly what they were doing.
Sounds like the band Black Flag’s song, American Waste. Those who don’t know of this band should check them out. early 80’s southerner CA punk rock band.
‘TV Party’!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3yUQFluNq0
What’s Kamala supposed to say? I’m half Indian and I half get it? (And she’s talking to Mindy Kaling who is such a nasty, mean person. Such is the life of a PMC achiever.)
Seems like a halfwit gotcha.
Kamala is black enough to get the side-eye and bad service through the USA. Trump knows that. His followers know that. We all know he’s just replaying the early hits for the fans.
I don’t have a beef with Kamala being half-Indian, it’s the half-wit part of her I despise.
“Kamala is black enough to get the side-eye and bad service through the USA.”
Trump is smart enough to know that he is making in-roads on the black vote. Why would he needlessly endanger that? OTOH, does Kamala Harris hang out in the parts of the USA where she would get the side eye? The Hamptons and The French Laundry are not typical of the American landscape. Can she honestly say that she really “gets it”?
Well, luckily she won’t have to while Trump is left trying to explain the rationale for a 2020 campaign decision that she most assuredly made. Frankly, he should be spending more time asking why she bailed out the banks and his Treasury Secretary in California at the expense of not-French-Laundry America, but then I am not his campaign manager.
Plenty of time for all the other Kamala oppo. This is the point that Taibbi and Kirn have been making. By not going through the testing process of a competitive primary Harris is an unproven vote getter. As for what Trump said during that interviiew, he was just jerking the chain of people who brought him there to jerk his. Early days.
So…. I am going through my list of diverse political analysts on YT, and I came across this by a black analyst supportive of Trump, and he is in agreement with you that this was just jerking of Trump’s chain.
Starts at the 3:20 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLzLGZH6hUo
He is taking this as a joke, but his views are a pretty instructive insight into how the zeitgeist in the black community is looking today.
Just came across another one and, oof!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtif_XDqEUo
All of the other nominally black podcasts I watch, RBN, Tim Black, etc., aren’t much better. Kamala may have larger problems than she thinks.
How come the Democrats never find a black Presidential candidate from Chicago or Alabama or new York or somewhere like that but have to go overseas to places like Kenya or India or Jamaica? At this point it is getting like a meme.
Probably closely related to the reason that, in Hawai‘i, the Dem governor Josh Green and one of the two Dem U.S. senators, Brian Schatz, are not in any way “PoC” or “AANHPI” but are instead white, and Jewish to boot.
On a psychological level, I do not think that the Democrats and the PMC would be comfortable with a black American candidate who had slaves in their family history. It would make them feel too awkward and there would be questions raised that they do not want to look in the eye. It would break too many social norms. So instead they are going with a candidate – Kamala – who has actual slavers in her family history.
Aren’t a fair proportion of the blacks in Ivy League schools from overseas? I’m not sure if that applies to other elite institutions that tend to provide presidential candidates, but it might be a factor. In Chicago or Alabama you might not get to rub shoulders with the CIA and Soros people at a young enough age to be onboarded to the ranks of our future figurehead leaders.
There is a bit of history there: in 1990s and early 00’s, there was a tendency for US higher ed (certainly the case at one of my grad schools) to meet diversity requirement via int’l students (Nigerians, Jamaicans, and Kenyans–ironically, a rather familiar list of countries!) That’s no longer allowed by law, as far as I know, and led to questions about what exactly qualifies someone as black in US, though. It’s still an issue, I believe, in reparationist circles.
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/2024/07/31/dallas-billionaire-mark-cuban-leads-venture-capitalists-group-supporting-kamala-harris/
Dallas billionaire Mark Cuban leads venture capitalists group supporting Kamala Harris
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/07/a-congressman-and-a-doctor-reported-a-woman-being-shot-at-trump-rally-shes-vanished-from-official-reports/
A Congressman and a Doctor Reported a Woman Being Shot at Trump Rally: She’s Vanished from Official Reports
Re black or not–that comment wasn’t aimed at the AP (a very dem outlet these days) or Mother Jones. And I think it’s legitimate commentary on ID Pol and how it does indeed want to have it “both ways.” After all one reason Harris is getting the nomination without a single real vote is the view that the Dems wouldn’t dare shove aside a black woman in favor of someone who actually knows something about foreign policy or oh, say, anything other than being a prosecutor.
So the weakness of the rebuttal is indeed the question of whether she has any other qualifications beyond identity and the other thing Trump said–that she seems to be hiding from an open press conference–is part of this. It was her fellow Dems, not Trump, who disposed of Harris in that 2020 primary and since one of them was woman of color Tulsi you can hardly call it racist although that won’t stop the press spinners now.
A minute into the Debate, and it was obvious Biden had severe neurological health problems. Biden’s health was a known factor. If the DNC had not canceled the primary debates Biden would have crashed and burned, and an actual primary election would have happened. A primary is risky for the ruling class because the voters might pick the wrong candidate.
The ruling class picked Harris because she will do what they want, and race is a great distraction they’ve been utilizing for decades while the loot the nation.
“Couldn’t something be done with “Kamala” and “Chameleon”?”
Seems like that would be pretty easy:
Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon……Kamala mala mala mala mala chameleon.
I’m a man (a man) without conviction
I’m a man (a man) who doesn’t know
How to sell (to sell) a contradiction
You come and go, you come and go
https://www.google.com/search?q=lyrics+karma+chameleon&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS926US926&oq=lyrics+karma+chamelion&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgBEAAYDRiABDIGCAAQRRg5MgkIARAAGA0YgAQyCQgCEAAYDRiABDIICAMQABgWGB4yCAgEEAAYFhgeMgoIBRAAGAoYFhgeMgoIBhAAGAUYDRgeMgoIBxAAGAgYDRgeMgoICBAAGAgYDRgeMgoICRAAGAgYDRge0gEJMTI2NDBqMGo3qAIIsAIB&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Talk about enshitification
I won’t include the link, but it’s basically chat GPT for finding and bidding on federal and state contracts. So vendors can easy apply so to speak for these. With likely garbage apps. Likely will inundate with trash or people claiming to do services they don’t even understand fully. Great!
About 3 weeks til Burning Man, i’m pretty geeked up… we gotta great camp and lotsa cool peeps~
They call the 51 weeks a year you aren’t there, the ‘default world’, and its quite fitting in a place where once you’re through the gate, money will only buy you ice.
I feel positive there must be a bunch of Burners that follow NC, no?
And in Santa Fe the original burning man Zozobra will be celebrating its 100th anniversary.
Zozobra was invented by a Santa Fe artist named Will Shuster. In part it was an addition to the Fiesta de Santa Fe, which commemorates the reconquest of Santa Fe by the Spanish military in 1692.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoVei5S26CU
Back in the day, when I was involved in efforts to standardize classification schemes, one of my colleagues produced (I paraphrase) the following bon mot: “For all sentences, the word is can be replaced by has been classified as without loss of meaning.”
___________________
Lambert, so interesting you should post this the day after I received a letter from a friend written on the back of a copy of a 1992 Atlantic article about people who practice writing and speaking without using the verb “to be” or any conjugations thereof.
The article is still out there:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/02/to-be-in-their-bonnets/376347/
Although of course it is paywalled. It’s a fascinating article and written without the use of “to be”. Brain boggling if you try it. I have a headache now.
NC is too “out there” and “weird” for burner heads.
What’s a burner head?
Out there weird guess: People who regularly attend the Burning Man Festival
Guessing: perhaps an in-group term for a devotee of “Burning Man”?
Burning Man aficionados.
As I first heard at the big boat show in the Convention Hall back in the 1970s; “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”
I’ve known people that go, been invited, and can’t afford to be that stupid.
You see them on old Svea backpacking stoves…
I was a once in awhile Parrothead, but i’ve never heard of the suffix nomenclature being used among Burners, who are called just that-Burners.
i made it up. kinda like it. as a suffix, “heads” is after all in pretty wide informal use and i guessed can be and has been spontaneously applied on all sorts of occasions, perhaps mostly in bars but that is pure speculation, to many types of people by many other types of people. (i’m not sure if my references to types here qualify as constructivist or essentialist though.)
checking merriam-webster.com, i find under their 20th meaning for head, noun, the following, which confirms my coinage:
20
a
: one who uses a drug —often used in combination
pothead
b
: a devoted enthusiast : AFICIONADO —often used in combination
computerhead
…so perhaps i should have run it in thus: burnerhead?
i hope you can appreciate my coinage wuk,
as it has a respectable, i mean respectful (to you), provenance.
i made it up. kinda like it. as a suffix, “heads” is after all in pretty wide informal use and i guessed can be and has been spontaneously applied on all sorts of occasions, perhaps mostly in bars but that is pure speculation, to many types of people by many other types of people. (i’m not sure whether my references to types here qualify as constructivist or essentialist though.)
checking merriam-webster.com, i find under their 20th meaning for head, noun, the following, which confirms my coinage:
20
a
: one who uses a drug —often used in combination
pothead
b
: a devoted enthusiast : AFICIONADO —often used in combination
computerhead
…so perhaps i should have run it in thus: burnerhead?
and i hope you may come to value my coinage wuk,
as it has a respectable, i mean respectful (to you) provenance.
on “Victoria’s new ‘clean air’ project could help end the COVID pandemic”
question for the Covid experts:
Even in the best scenario, could air filtration/UV light (referred to here as air cleaning devices (ACD)) at indoor public buildings “end the pandemic” in a given nation/subnational region
or
be a new & best “piece of swiss cheese with the smallest hole” that would still need to be used in conjuction with other NPI “pieces” to “end the pandemic”?
I imagine the best case ACD scenario being
1 consider the regions that to date had the best (or least bad) Covid performance, like China, New Zealand, or Western Australia
2 The Federal government enacts a CAND (Clean Air New Deal), funding a new FCAA (Federal Clean Air Agency) to install & maintain this ACD at all indoor private & public building establishments, free to the establishment. The equipment would run automatically 24/7 or be programmed by the FCAA. The FCAA would levy SEVERE fines for an establishment manager tampering or disabling the ACD the FCAA had installed.
Even in this “best case scenario”, would this “end the pandemic” by driving the Covid reproduction number R to permanently decrease to below 1.0 in say New Zealand?
My guesstimate is that for this ACD to actually “end the pandemic”, it would have to be done with
3 adequate waster testing at the metro area or county level, which if it exceeds the equivalent treshhold of X (50/100K?) current COVID cases, the following would temporary mandatory mitigation measures:
4 universal N95-type mask mandate at all indoor public establishments
5 ban on persons crossing international borders.
What do you think?
Re: recombination, sadly the Coronavirus loves this, though in a less modular way than influenza. RNA viruses leave all kinds of disorganized genetic material around in infected cells (often cells coinfected with several lineages at once, especially in the immunocompromised), and the bits can get packaged up in novel combinations. Most of the time it’s a non functioning mess. But spin the wheel enough times and you get world-beating new variants like XBB or JN1. T. Ryan Gregory has good threads on this.
I remember that song!
Kama Kama Kama Kama Kamee-lee-on, you come and go….
I remember that song!
Kama Kama Kama Kama, Kama Kamee-lee-on, you come and go….
Nickname would be “Kamalameleon” :).
Harris’ Overambitious Immigration Plan Sets Up Trump Attacks – Bloomberg
https://archive.ph/aQ6uv
An overambitious plan to tackle the root causes of immigration would include debt relief as #1 priority.
Countries south of the border will never be able to develop under the thumb of the IMF or World Bank with their built-in austerity measures.
Not to mention the constant sanctions regimes and attempted coups of their governments. They specifically mention Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in that Bloomberg article, but don’t mention that they have all been subject to the big stick of our foreign policies for decades now.
Speaking of which, I see that Venezuela is about to get a new Juan Guaido; some guy named Urrutia. He is going to help them bring democracy to their country, saith Antony Blinken:
“The Secretary of State said the U.S. supports re-establishing democratic norms in Venezuela and is ready to help with other international partners.”
You would think he would be bored with destroying other people’s countries by now, but no such luck.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/4807135-antony-blinken-venezuela-election-results/
Who really thinks Shapiro is going to be the Harris pick for VP? He seems like a weak choice to me. How does he help her outside of Pennsylvania? Is he known as a great fundraiser (IIRC, the reason HRC picked Kaine)?
Mayo Pete is also being widely mentioned for VP, mostly by Mayo Pete. He is finally back from maternity leave, working the news shows, which we all know is the primary job of the Sec of Transportation.
Who really thinks Shapiro is going to be the Harris pick for VP? He seems like a weak choice to me
Hillary Clinton was the Team Blue nominee in 2016.
On scammers, I accidentally bought my first counterfeit book today. I didn’t even know this was a thing. It was more of a financial textbook, available in hardcover or PDF, and I received a paperbound book (tried to find used, ended up ordering from Ebay, mistake, other places were all Amazon owned) with text that’s clearly right off a poor ink jet printer. Kind of mind blowing.
Nasal COVID-19 vaccine halts transmission
> The researchers immunized groups of hamsters with laboratory versions of approved COVID-19 vaccines: the nasal iNCOVACC used in India or the injected Pfizer vaccine
iNCOVACC
> BBV154 – A novel adenovirus vectored, intranasal vaccine for COVID-19
“Weird” got to Trump (politco).
The I know you are but what am I response:
They got him on this one, so credit to the Dems I guess. Seems like he could kill the line of attack with things like:
– “You know what’s weird? People having to pay ridiculous prices for basic essentials”
– “You know what’s weird? Letting immigrants take the jobs that should be there for regular Americans (or rape and murder our daughters or whatever depths he’s willing to plumb)”
– “You know what’s weird? The democrats refuse to talk about a single issue because they have no answers.”
I thought Trump had better political instincts than this…maybe getting shot takes a man off his game. Understandable!
Isn’t Kamala what we used to call a “quadroon” back in the bad old days? Similar to Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers. There used to be a complicated nomenclature for types of mixed race individuals, which would be even more of a social construction than the concept of unmixed black and white people, which is itself already a social construction. There are supposed “white” people who have much darker complexions than some “mixed race” individuals, which is why it seems ridiculous to me that people like Rishi Sunak and Nikki Haley get called “persons of color” in some venues. Most of the Palestinians and Israelis look alike to me, but it’s hinted to us that the Palestinians are effectively non-white for some reason.
If anything, race is more of a social construction than sex, because there is no clearcut biological marker to look at that necessarily draws the line between one race and another. So it seems incoherent to say one may only be permitted to be transgender but not transracial.
Isn’t Kamala what we used to call a “quadroon” back in the bad old days?
Not really, since she is half-Indian (as from the Indian subcontinent).
The Spaniards had a very elaborate terminology for many forms of miscigenations, but none that I know of that included people from the Indian subcontinent. Crossing a mulatto with an Indian (as in native Indians from America) would give a “chino” (which has nothing to do with Chinese people).
In apartheid South-Africa, she would just be “coloured”.
In that kind of classification, Obama is of course not “black” but “mulatto”.
Yes, it is all a social construct, based on which community your ancestors belonged to.
Lambert, I’ve been meaning to mention how much I enjoy the mockingbirds. Years ago, when I was working far from home and feeling lonely, a bird came to me when I went in the backyard. He was very tame–I could almost hand feed him. Each day, when I went out, he appeared, perched close to me, and sang ceaselessly as long as I stayed. The neighbors said it was a mockingbird, which I had never seen before. I don’t know if they are naturally bold, or he was someone’s pet. This wonderful visitor serenaded me all summer and cheered me up a great deal.
Intel cuts 15000 people, 15% of its workforce. Receives 8 billion USD in subsidies, proceeds to cut workers. Nothing to see here, people, it’s American’s exceptionalism at work again.
The Grub Street link on kicking the stone doesn’t quite do justice to the experiment: Dr Johnson rebounded from the stone, thus illustrating Newton’s third law of motion. Bishop Berkeley would have been a lunar landing denialist.